We live through books; we have adventures in them, we lead alternative lives through them. We expand our memories through them. And that sometimes art can offer us more intense experiences of the world than life itself can.

I guess whatever maturity is there may be there because I've been keeping a journal forever. In high school my friends would make fun of me - you're doing your man diary again. So I was always trying to translate experience into words.

Radio - and perhaps airplanes, and then of course, the atom bomb - was the preeminent technology of the first half of the 20th century. It was how the Third Reich controlled its citizens, spread lies, and disseminated fear.

I've been getting into Nick Drake lately, the folk singer. Sad, gorgeous stuff.

So how, children, does the brain, which lives without a spark of light, build for us a world full of light?

My sister-in-law is a painter, and I'll say, how long did it take you to paint that painting. She'll say, It took me maybe three days, but it took me all my life to get the skills to paint that painting.

You don't say, I'm going to be a writer when I grow up - at least I didn't.